


i will carry you over fire and water for your love

by prettyluke (buttonjimin)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Fluff, OT4, Oneshot, Schizophrenia, not intentional self harm!, only mentioned once, possible self harm trigger, sorta - Freeform, this is pretty cute i'm ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4334684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttonjimin/pseuds/prettyluke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke is schizophrenic, and it takes three of them to love him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will carry you over fire and water for your love

Michael wants people to understand Luke.

He wants them to understand that Luke isn’t frightening, or crazy; he wants them to understand that Luke’s schizophrenia puts nobody at risk but himself. Michael had never known anybody who was schizophrenic before he met Luke, and he’d had no idea what he was getting himself into. When he’d found out two other boys had beaten him to the chase, he was more than skeptical.

Ashton had found Luke first; Luke had been standing outside the theater, and he’d been talking to himself under his breath, or so it seemed. There had been a crowd of boys around him, taunting him for it. Luke had looked so dazed, so disoriented, that Ashton had found it in himself to look at the scars on his own wrist and step in. He would figure out later that Luke was seeing people that didn’t exist, and was thoroughly confused during the incident about who was real and who wasn’t. Ashton said it had taken a good deal of convincing to persuade Luke that he wasn’t a knight in shining armor his addled brain had dreamed up.

Ashton asked Luke out a few months later, and he’d had to figure it out on his own. Michael got lucky, with two boys already accustomed to Luke’s habits and behavior. He had a manual, so to speak. But Ashton was as clueless as anybody when it came to schizophrenia.

He loved Luke, and that was the biggest thing. He was willing to find out for himself if loving Luke was even possible. He had heard stories, stigma, about schizophrenics hearing voices, being driven to homicide, institutionalization—and no doubt, there were people who fit the stigma—but Ashton quickly figured out that Luke didn’t.

He heard voices, sure, but there was more to it. Luke wasn’t a killer, didn’t need to be locked away. Ashton threw his heart and soul into caring for the boy. When they moved into an apartment, and Luke started exhibiting more symptoms, Ashton took it in stride. There was nothing he wouldn’t do.

Calum crashed into their lives a year after they moved in. He met Luke in college and came over to study frequently. Luke and Ashton both panicked until they realized they both found Calum attractive, and although Calum didn’t recognize the schizophrenia until Luke finally told him, the best part was that he was so kind.

It was a natural fit. Calum thought Luke was the cutest thing that he’d ever seen (a sentiment Ashton wholeheartedly agreed with). Where Ashton had been a protector, someone to shield Luke and make him feel safe, Calum made him laugh, lit him up like nobody else. Calum was the one who took things lightly, loosened them both up. He turned their worlds upside down, equally. He cared for Luke as much as Ashton did, loved holding him at night and keeping him close. He loved waking up in the morning with Ashton and helping make breakfast, going for the runs Luke hated and keeping Ashton company. They were a perfect trio. Every unit was symbiotic; they balanced each other out.

Michael was the one to mix things up a bit. He had bumped into Ashton at the music store, looking for some new albums. Bringing Michael into the fold was the easiest, because it evened the numbers out and just made sense. Calum was particularly taken with him, as Michael brought video games, a boyish sense of humor and an intuition the other two lacked. They were good at understanding Luke, at trying to help him, but Michael could always tell when he was zoning out and seeing or hearing things. He could tell when Luke was confused, when he was agitated. Most of all, he could tell when Luke was scared, and Luke was scared a lot.

Ashton and Calum loved Luke so much that their first reaction was usually panic, which neither helped nor consoled Luke. Michael figured solutions out fast. He slowed things down, had an understanding of what Luke was feeling and what would comfort him.

And Michael loves Luke.

They all love each other, but there’s no doubt that they revolve around Luke. They don’t love him more than each other—they all vowed to never take favorites or exclude each other—but they all share the strong protective instinct over Luke that keeps him safe.

Because he _isn’t_ crazy, and he _isn’t_ dangerous. Luke is small, and soft. Luke gets confused easily because he hallucinates people and situations, and he needs them to constantly tell him what is real. He asks them, _Real?_ after every story he tells, every person he meets. He’ll ask three times to be sure, because he can forget, too. His hallucinations seem so real to him that it’s often hard to convince him otherwise. If he’s tired, he's even more lost and likely to cry out of frustration.

Luke doesn’t worry about himself, but he worries about them. He worries something will happen to Ashton and Calum when they go on their morning jog, while Michael sits with him in bed and holds him until they come back. He worries people are after them, and that’s why he makes them check the doors twice and the windows three times, because _I heard someone knocking, Ashton, don’t open the door._

Luke doesn’t like the TV and the computers; there are days when he didn’t like them using their phones, because he’s convinced they’re being watched. That’s when Luke gets nervous and curls up in bed with the covers under his chin. They keep all the electronics save for their phones in one room, and Luke never goes inside. He can’t walk down the street without holding onto Ashton, because he’s always sure everyone is watching him. His delusions are many and varied, and he cries whenever they finally break one and convince him he was just being paranoid again.

Luke doesn’t like to be alone, because that’s when the voices in his head get mean. One of the boys is always at home with him, even if he’s on his medication, because they don’t want a repeat of the time Calum came home to find him curled up in the bathtub, slamming his head against the wall. A concussion later, they had learned the hard way.

It’s a frustrating and terrifying existence for Luke, and they all know no matter how much they try to ease it, he will always suffer to some degree. The first medication had been devastating; he didn’t tell any of them how out of his mind it made him, but then, he didn’t even know himself that he was having psychotic episodes. A week later, Ashton had forcibly unlocked the bathroom door during his bath, concerned he was taking too long, and found him frantically scratching his skin raw and bloody to _get rid of the crawling_ under his skin. An hour after that, he was sedated in the hospital.

Risperdal helps with the hallucinations and delusions, but it didn’t send them packing for good. Nights are worse.

They are all accustomed to being woken up in the middle of the night by a scared, crying Luke. He doesn’t like the dark, because hallucinating is more frightening then. It’s easiest to convince him he’s hearing things, because they can put their hands over his ears for him, but he’s often so terrified by seeing people standing in the room that the best way to calm him down and ease his hitching, shallow breaths is for Ashton to lie on top of him and shield him with his body, blocking his line of sight and reassuring him that anything that means him harm would have to go through Ashton’s muscular frame. Ashton worries endlessly about crushing him, but it doesn’t work for Calum and Michael to do it, because they aren’t big enough to comfort him the way Ashton can.

Sometimes living with Luke is easy; he can be lively, flirty. He likes letting the other boys push him around and tease him, is the most careful out of all of them to divide his time among his boyfriends equally. They all hold precious places in his heart. He holds the title for the most thoughtful boyfriend of all of them.

And sometimes living with Luke is difficult, more for him than them. It’s hard to see him suffer, always—no matter how much therapy and medication he gets, even with their best efforts, it will never be possible to take away all his pain. He will live with schizophrenia for the rest of his life.

He will always live with certain fears. They will, until their dying days, have to comfort him day and night. They will always have to tell him what is real and what isn’t.

But Michael loves Luke. They all do. Loving Luke is not easy—it never will be—but it’s worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like an hour at midnight to one am and i kind of liked it  
> i saw otra two days ago and my mind was blown so the title is from through the dark by one direction lol  
> anyways! check out my other stuff if you get bored bc it's better than this shit and if you have schizophrenia or know someone who does and want to critique any aspect of this for accuracy please please please message me bc i do not want to offend anyone and i have no personal experience with it so just let me know  
> and that's about it i love you all pls feed my ego and tell me how it was xxxxxxx


End file.
